Category: New York, NY

New York, NY (March 23, 2016) – Tenet Partners, a leading brand innovation and marketing firm, today announced it received Merit Recognition in the 2016 Rebrand 100^® global award competition. The accolade recognizes the strategy, development and implementation of the Tenet Partners brand, formed from the merger of Brandlogic and CoreBrand in 2014.

Charged with creating a unified company that would balance and build off of Brandlogic’s and CoreBrand’s respective legacies and decades of expertise building brands in a changing, multi-channel world, the firm set out to create a new agency model – one that put customer-centric experiences at the core of driving brand innovations.

“Brandlogic and CoreBrand joined forces to create Tenet Partners with the goal of providing broader and deeper value to clients,” said Hampton Bridwell, CEO and Managing Partner of Tenet Partners. “Our brand is an important symbol of our commitment to helping clients put customers at the center of their business strategies. It is an honor to be recognized in the Rebrand 100 among such an elite group of global brands and agencies.”

The foundation of the Tenet Partners brand is the belief that in order to grow a business and drive revenues, a new set of principles is required that put customers at the center of business strategy. CMOs today are wrestling with the challenge of building brand experiences around customers, not merely attracting customers to a brand. Uncovering innovative areas of opportunity and helping organizations better understand how being brand-centric is good for business – this is served as the core ethos and guiding principle when bringing the two firms together under a single entity.

The company’s name Tenet was derived from the word tenet, a commonly held belief or principle. As a united company, Tenet Partners continues its shared philosophical legacy of creating and executing practical solutions to branding, technology and marketing applications for the world’s leading organizations. Partners is a nod to the firm’s collaborative and human-centered approach to brand building.

“While “Tenet” as a name reflects a belief or ethos, our visual identity reinforces the strength of conviction that stands behind that belief, “said Randell Holder, Design Director at Tenet Partners. “Simple and bold, the logo is bracketed top and bottom by vertical rules perfectly aligned to the visual center of the mark – bringing it back to the notion of thinking, believing and discovering more customer centered solutions.”

Tenet Partners brings together the complementary skills of the Brandlogic and CoreBrand teams, creating an employee-owned organization of researchers, strategists, writers, designers, technologists and thought leaders across four offices in New York City, Santa Monica, Rochester, N.Y. and Wilton, Conn. The company’s client history includes more than 200 high-profile global businesses, 90 percent of which are Fortune 500 corporations in the financial services, healthcare, industrial, pharmaceuticals, technology, insurance, transportation, consumer goods, education, energy, information services, non-profit, professionals and telecom industries. To view Tenet Partners’ award-winning Rebrand 100^® entry or to see the complete list of this year’s winners, please visit: http://www.rebrand.com/merit-tenet-partners

Before: old logos – separate companies

After: new name and logo

About REBRAND

REBRAND is the world’s leading platform for brand transformation insights, case examples, programs, and expertise. Celebrating 10+ years of excellence, its renowned REBRAND 100^® Global Awards is the most highly respected, juried recognition for repositioned brands, having reached participation from over 51 countries in 41+ industries. Featured in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, CNN Money, Bloomberg News, articles and books, the competition has contributed to an unrivaled global library of transformed brands.

About Tenet Partners

Tenet Partners is a brand innovation and marketing consultancy that helps companies create brand value and unearth business opportunities by putting customers at the center of their business strategies. For more information, please visit us at tenetpartners.com and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

For more information, please contact:
Russ Napolitano
Chief Operating Officer
Tenet Partners
+ 1 212 329-3035
rnapolitano@tenetpartners.com

New York, NY (March 14, 2016) – Tenet Partners, a leading brand innovation and marketing firm, announced today that Powerhouse: The Secrets of Corporate Branding, the latest book by Tenet Chairman, James R. Gregory has earned the #1 spot in multiple categories and countries on Amazon.

With over 40 years of experience in advertising and branding, Powerhouse is a compilation of Gregory’s personal observations of the best practices that have helped a number of his global clients grow the value of their corporate brand and in turn, improve their performance in the marketplace. Gregory argues that to in order for corporate brands to effectively create enterprise value, business leaders need to be attuned to the factors that are influencing their corporate reputation and strategically manage and measure their brand like any other business asset.

Published in December 2015 by Best Selling Publishing, Powerhouse has received top-ranking positions on Amazon across 15 national and international categories including #1 in Advertising, Marketing and Consulting in the US, #1 in Business life in Canada, #1 in Consulting in the UK and #1 in Advertising & Marketing in AUS, just to name a few.

“Jim brings enormous experience and depth to the table when addressing the topic of corporate brands,” said Hampton Bridwell, CEO and Managing Partner at Tenet Partners. “The success and praise of Powerhouse is a testament to his impressive career helping clients understand how their brand creates measurable financial value.”

Among the key challenges facing brands today, which Gregory offers thoughtful insight and analysis, include:

• Corporate brand valuation – recommendations to build and manage brand value
• Achieving Coherence with Brand Communications
• Reliable Metrics for Determining ROI on Brand Communications
• Employee Engagement – Creating a Brand Driven Culture with Employees
• Creating and Managing the Customer Experience to Drive Value
• Strategies for Successful Social Media Engagement
• Brand Strategy from an M&A Perspective
• Building Relevance and Quantifying Relevance Over Time

Powerhouse: The Secrets of Corporate Branding is now available in print and e-reader format on Amazon.

About the Author

James R. Gregory is the chairman of Tenet Partners, a global brand innovation and marketing firm based in New York, NY. With 40 years of experience in advertising and branding, Jim is a leading expert on brand management and is credited with developing strategies for measuring the power of brands and their impact on a corporation’s financial performance. Most notable of the tools that Jim has developed is the CoreBrand^® Index (CBI), a quantitative research vehicle that continuously tracks the reputation and financial performance of over 1,000 publicly traded companies across 50 industries. Jim has written four previous books on creating value with brands.

About Tenet Partners

Tenet Partners is a brand innovation and marketing consultancy that helps companies create brand value and unearth business opportunities by putting customers at the center of their business strategies. For more information, please visit us at tenetpartners.com and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

For more information, please contact:
Russ Napolitano
Chief Operating Officer
Tenet Partners
+ 1 212 329-3035
rnapolitano@tenetpartners.com

New York, NY (January 20, 2016) – Tenet Partners, a leading brand innovation and marketing firm, will host a panel discussion on “Building a Powerful Brand in the Age of Disruption” in collaboration with the New York American Marketing Association (NYAMA) on January 26, 2016 at the Harvard Club of New York City.

The event will assemble senior-level brand strategy and marketing professionals from across various industries including technology, media, healthcare, education, hospitality and more. A panel discussion moderated by Don Sexton, Professor of Marketing and Decisions, Risk, and Operations, Columbia University, will provide insights on the challenges and opportunities marketing professionals face today and explore why driving growth through disruption requires strategic alignment between business model innovation, digital and brand strategy.

Panelists include:

• Jim Gregory, Chairman, Tenet Partners
• Kevin Perlmutter, SVP, Chief Strategist, Man Made Music
• Brian Aronowitz, Chief Marketing Officer, Institute of Culinary Education
• Alexa Christon, Head of Media Innovation, GE

What: “Building a Powerful Brand in the Age of Disruption” Panel Discussion Presented by Tenet Partners and the New York American Marketing Association (NYAMA)

When: Tuesday, January 26, 2016 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM (EST)

Where: The Harvard Club of New York City – 35 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036

Tickets: $35 for NYAMA Members/$45 for Non-NYAMA Members. For more information and to register, please visit: http://www.nyama.org/event/the-age-of-disruption/

About Tenet Partners

Formed from the merger of Brandlogic and CoreBrand, Tenet Partners is a brand innovation and marketing consultancy the helps companies create brand value and unearth business opportunities by putting customers at the center of their business strategies. For more information, please visit us at tenetpartners.com and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

About the New York American Marketing Association (NYAMA)

The New York American Marketing Association (NYAMA) is an organization that inspires, supports and celebrates brilliance in marketing. Founded in 1931, the NYAMA is the principal community for marketing professionals across all industries and disciplines in the New York area. Offering programs, monthly events, an interaction with the chapter through volunteer activities, we provide marketers with an opportunity to increase their knowledge and reach in the marketing community. We also serve as a resource for all marketing events, activities and news in the New York and surrounding areas.

For more information, please contact:

Russ Napolitano
Chief Operating Officer
Tenet Partners
+ 1 212 329-3035
rnapolitano@tenetpartners.com

New York, NY (December 08, 2015) – Amid high-profile announcements concerning the possible sale of Avon Products North American arm to private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP, Tenet Partners, a leading brand innovation and marketing firm has turned its attention to evaluating the strength of the Avon brand.

On the heels of assertions by activist investors Barington Capital and NuOrion Partners that the cosmetics maker is significantly undervalued, Tenet Partners’ CoreBrand Index (CBI) has found that Avon’s BrandPower – a weighted composite of two key metrics that contribute to a brand’s ability to drive long-term growth: Familiarity and Favorability, has been steadily increasing since 2005.

“The successive rise of Avon’s BrandPower suggests there is untapped potential for the company to exert its leadership position in the marketplace,” said Hampton Bridwell, Tenet Partners CEO and Managing Partner. “Avon is an American institution that has empowered generations of women. However, as the company looks to the future, a renewed focus on gaining relevance among younger, and now digitally-driven consumers, will be critical to unlocking the full value of one of its most important assets, the Avon brand.”

As the chart indicates below, Avon’s BrandPower has climbed an impressive 11 points since 2005. Most recently, its brand Favorability fell just one spot below Apple, while its Favorability during 2015 outperformed its top competitors including Revlon, L’Oréal, and Estee Lauder, demonstrating that U.S. consumers still hold the brand in in high regard.

Founded in 1990, Tenet Partners’ CoreBrand Index is the longest continuous quantitative database examining the corporate reputations and brand valuations of nearly 1,000 companies across 50 industries. The Familiarity (awareness) and Favorability (perception) of tracked brands are measured and combined into a single metric called BrandPower. The audience used to measure BrandPower is business decision-makers who represent the perceptions of a cross-section of informed American consumers.

To learn more about Avon’s performance on Tenet’s CoreBrand Index and to schedule an interview with a Tenet executive, please contact:

Russ Napolitano
Chief Operating Officer
Tenet Partners
+ 1 212 329-3035
rnapolitano@tenetpartners.com

About Tenet Partners

Formed from the merger of Brandlogic and CoreBrand, Tenet Partners is a brand innovation and marketing consultancy that helps companies create brand value and unearth business opportunities by putting customers at the center of their business strategies. For more information, please visit us at tenetpartners.com and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

New York, NY (November 20, 2015) – On December 8-9, join the largest gathering of Fortune 500 strategy professionals at The Chief Strategy Officer Summit in New York City. As the event’s sponsored Chairperson, Tenet will be kicking-off the two day conference with a presentation from Russ Napolitano, Tenet Chief Operating Officer.

As the notion of brand disruption becomes more commonplace – with companies questioning its impact and value, Russ will break down some common misconceptions about what it means to be a brand disruptor and why driving growth through disruption requires strategic alignment between innovation, marketing, and business and brand strategy.

What: The Chief Strategy Officer Summit, “Creating & Implementing Innovative Strategy.” Heavily content driven, this event shares insight into how today’s biggest and best organizations are developing strategy, vision and growth.

When: December 8-9, New York

Where: The Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel

For more information and to request an invitation, click here

New York, NY (November 17, 2015) – Recently, Tenet Partners was ranked highly among a nationwide evaluation of Branding Agencies by research firm Clutch. Clutch is located in Washington, DC and has the most extensive research coverage on digital, branding, and development agencies worldwide.

Clutch’s research algorithm took into account many things: our previous work, our client base, and our proven ability to deliver on past branding, digital strategy, and design projects. With our client references and the other factors considered, we were mapped against the other Branding Agencies with only the top performing agencies making the Leaders Matrix.

In addition to one of the top spots among Branding Agencies nationwide, we were recognized as the leader among New York Branding Agencies. The external recognition for our work is great but the best part of the research process were the interviews Clutch conducted with three of our clients. Here’s what they had to say:

It was rewarding to see all of the great things our clients said about us and reinforces the fact that Tenet Partners is committed to delivering meaningful and compelling branding and marketing experiences to our clients.

To learn more about how we were evaluated or read all of Tenet Partners Reviews check out Clutch.

New York, NY (November 16, 2015) – Tenet Partners, a leading brand innovation and marketing firm, is pleased to announce the release of a new report, “The Strong Link Between Advertising and Stock Value,” by Chairman Jim Gregory. Published by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s), the report is an updated edition of Gregory’s and CoreBrand’s 1997 landmark report “The Impact of Advertising on Stock Performance.”

The field of advertising and marketing communications has changed dramatically since 1997. Despite the advances in technology, data, and analytics, Gregory argues that advertising is still commonly viewed as a burdensome cost with vague returns. Based on his breakthrough research utilizing Tenet Partners’ CoreBrand^® Index (CBI), a quantitative research vehicle that has continuously tracked since 1990 the reputations and financial performance of nearly 1,000 publicly traded companies across 50 industries, the report reveals a stunning correlation between advertising and brand image – 30 percent of brand image is attributable to advertising spending. Moreover, a longitudinal analysis of 220 public companies in the CBI reveals that brand image has a direct impact on earnings growth and stock performance.

The report is divided into three key sections, in which Gregory skillfully explores the effect of a company’s brand communications on its image and its return on investments.

Dynamic Relationships

Over many years of research and analysis, Gregory has identified quantitative relationships between advertising and corporate brand image and between corporate brand image and stock price. The report examines the most significant factors driving corporate brand image, including advertising spending, attributing 30 percent, the most important factor in determining image with other forms of communications, such as public relations, investor relations, employee relations, and social media contributing an additional 23 percent. Additionally, the findings reveal how different levels of advertising spending affect stock price, and therefore, shareholder value. As a result, the report sheds light on how a benefit/cost ratio can then be developed, providing valuable insights and methods for helping to set communication strategies as well as offering practical evidence of how a company’s advertising expenditure works in driving corporate reputation.

The Solid Link Between Corporate Brand Advertising and Corporate Brand Image

This section identifies The Advertising Efficiency Curve, presenting several relationships between corporate brand image and advertising. The findings show that as companies begin to advertise aggressively, a very high rate of return often immediately follows. This momentum begins to slow down over time as the company builds a strong image, and then moves from a position of creating an image to one of maintaining it. As a company moves along the curve, the report provides key strategies for companies to consider for maximizing the return of their advertising dollars.

Speaking a Common Language: CEOs & Communicators on the Same Page

With a demand for corporations to fully understand and to use brand image as a tool to give their company a distinct competitive advantage, this section explains how the frameworks and models presented can be applied to decipher advertising’s impact on corporate image and the resulting effect on ROI. Furthermore, it explains how these models offer a common language between the communications department, CEO and CFO, providing a venue for mutual respect and common interest for the sometimes adversarial relationship of the CEO and communicator.

Commenting on the release of “The Strong Link Between Advertising and Stock Value,” Gregory said: “Given how high the stakes are in the investment world, companies cannot afford to dismiss anything that can support enterprise value – and that means the role of advertising is crucial. This finding is consistent with that we saw in 1997 with the release of ‘The Impact of Advertising on Stock Performance.’ However, with this updated edition, we offer an analysis on larger scale – enlarging our base to 220 companies and quantifying our image and stock-price models in even greater detail.”

Marsha Appel, 4A’s Senior Vice President, Research, added, “The original 1997 paper was one of the 4A’s most popular publications, so we are proud to issue the new report. It documents a stunning correlation between advertising expenditures and brand image, and between image and stock price, proving what good marketers have always known—that advertising works.”

This updated edition contains also two case studies that illustrate the impact of advertising on stock performance, Aflac and a B2B case study in a commodity industry. Both cases help to demonstrate that when strategically allocated, paid media has proven to be a strong contributor to brand growth.

To purchase “The Strong Link Between Advertising and Stock Value,” visit the 4A’s bookstore.

##About the Author

Jim Gregory is the Chairman of Tenet Partners, a brand innovation and marketing consultancy. Jim is credited with developing pioneering and innovative tools for measuring the power of brands and their impact on a corporation’s financial performance. He has written four books on creating value with brands: Marketing Corporate Image, Leveraging the Corporate Brand, Branding Across Borders, and The Best of Branding. Jim is also a founding member of the Marketing Accountability Standards Advisory Council (MASAC) and is a member of the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB), where he is the co-chair of the Improving Financial Reporting Committee. Jim’s newest book, POWERHOUSE – The Secrets of Corporate Branding, will be released in January 2016.

About Tenet Partners

Formed from the merger of Brandlogic and CoreBrand, Tenet Partners is a brand innovation and marketing consultancy that helps companies create brand value and unearth business opportunities by putting customers at the center of their business strategies. For more information, please visit us at tenetpartners.com and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

About the 4A‘s

The 4A‘s is the catalyst for bringing together the right people in the right place at the right time to address the advertising industry’s most critical business issues. We provide leadership, advocacy, guidance and community to our members and the industry at large, with proprietary access to the people, information and tools needed to make smarter management decisions. Our mission is to help agencies become more successful. www.aaaa.org.

For more information, please contact:
Russ Napolitano
Chief Operating Officer
Tenet Partners
+ 1 212 329-3035
rnapolitano@tenetpartners.com

New York, NY (October 28, 2015) – Tenet Partners, a leading brand innovation and marketing firm, today released its third annual report on the most and least respected corporate brands – Brand Respect: The Most and Least Respected Corporate Brands of 2015. For the third consecutive year, The Coca-Cola Company tops the list of Most Respected Brands. Microsoft enters the ranking of Most Respected brands at #9, while Papa John’s, Foot Locker, and CVS Health join the ranking of the Least Respected companies.

The Brand Respect report correlates data determined by a survey of approximately 10,000 business decision-makers and opinion elites on two key metrics that contribute to a brand’s ability to drive long-term growth: Familiarity and Favorability. Brands with the highest Familiarity and Favorability are defined as most respected, while brands that are the most well known but have the lowest Favorability are considered the least respected.

“The respect a brand has earned, and can keep, speaks directly to its ability to remain competitive in today’s marketplace, said Hampton Bridwell, CEO and Managing Partner of Tenet Partners. “The Top 10 Most Respected Brands demonstrate the impact of a strong corporate reputation in building trust, loyalty and increased profitability. Meanwhile, the Top 10 Least Respected Brands – or simply the brands with the largest discrepancies between Familiarity and Favorability – need to think critically about the brand experiences they are creating in the marketplace and how they can regain the favor of consumers and investors.”

2015 Most Respected Brands

1. The Coca-Cola Company
2. PepsiCo
3. The Hershey Company
4. Bayer
5. Johnson & Johnson
6. Apple
7. Harley-Davidson
8. IBM
9. Microsoft
10. GE

Key Findings for the Most Respected Brands

• Coca-Cola retains its top status for the third consecutive year. While the company’s Familiarity is up slightly year-over-year, its Favorability declined this year, reaching its lowest point since 2011. The company’s Investment Potential – the measure on which key stakeholders surveyed indicated whether or not they would invest in the company, has fallen sharply in recent years: decreasing 7.1 points since 2009. Its Overall Reputation and Perception Management has also taken a hit, each declining 3.9 points and 3.1 points respectively, since 2009. The iconic 125 year-old company and Tenet Partners’ #1 Most Powerful Brand for seven years running, is clearly at an inflection point. However, in a move to inspire increased consumer and investor confidence and grow revenue, CEO Muhtar Kent has pledged to boost media spending and brand-building initiatives by up to $1 billion by 2016.

• Microsoft is new to the Most Respected list this year, having gained on both Familiarity and Favorability consistently over the past five years. The company saw notable gains across all three dimensions of Favorability: Overall Reputation, Perception of Management, and Investment Potential. While Investment Potential lags behind Overall Reputation and Perception of Management, analysts expect an improvement in earnings this year, due in large part to the latest version of its operating system, Windows 10 as well as from continued growth in the cloud-computing arena, which is continuing to find vigorous demand from enterprise customers.

• Apple improved by 2 spots and places on the Most Respected list at #6 this year. Across the dimensions of Favorability, Overall Reputation and Perception of Management experienced the greatest gains, increasing 1.9 points and 1.2 points respectively. The company’s Investment Potential also increased this year, gaining 1 point year-over-year. Among the Top 10 Most Respected Brands, Apple is the fastest growing brand in terms of Favorability. Year-over-year, the average Favorability of the Top 10 Most Respected Brands fell by a tenth of a point, while Apple’s Favorability jumped significantly, 1.4 points this year. For the full fiscal 2014, Apple reported $182.8 billion in sales, setting a new company record. As further evidence of the company’s strong financial performance – Apple’s Investment Potential has climbed the most over the past five years, increasing 8.8 points since 2010. The company reported iPhone sales of 61.2 million in its most recent quarter, well above the 58 million that analysts had been expecting. Aside from its earnings, Apple is also returning more money to shareholders, expanding the capital return program from $140 billion to $200 billion. This includes a $140 billion share-buyback authorization and a new quarterly dividend rate of $0.52 a share.

• Kellogg’s falls out a favor and drops off the Top 10 Most Respected Brands. The company has been struggling in recent quarters to drive earnings and innovation across its brand portfolio. Last year, the company saw sales drop 2% amid continued changing consumer sentiment towards a low-carb and protein heavy diet. Additionally, the continued growth of the Greek yogurt market, coupled with the rise of fast-food chains wooing consumers with cheaper breakfast alternatives, have also made it difficult for the company to maintain its strong standing.

A notable trend among the Top 10 Most Respected Brands is that they have demonstrated slow, stable, but consistent growth in their share prices. These standout brands, such as Johnson & Johnson (#5), Apple (#6), and Microsoft (#9), continue to deliver above average, double-digit operating margins and net profit – reflecting the ability of a strong brand to command premium pricing and revenue performance.

2015 Least Respected Brands

1. Delta Air Lines
2. H&R Block
3. Big Lots
4. Papa John’s
5. Denny’s
6. Rite Aid
7. JCPenney
8. Best Buy
9. Foot Locker
10. CVS Health

Key Findings for the Least Respected Brands

• Delta Air Lines (#1), H&R Block (#2), and Big Lots (#3) maintain their Least Respected status from 2014, each retaining their previous rank from last year. Although Delta is the least respected among the group, its Favorability has been steadily improving – gaining 5 points since 2010. The company’s Perception of Management score has experienced the most notable gain, jumping 11 points since 2010. The company’s CEO, Richard Anderson, is largely credited with helping to rebuild the once bankrupt brand. From buying an oil refinery in 2012 to help control fuel costs, expanding the airline’s base across Asia, Europe, Latin America and the U.S., to reducing the company’s overall debt, signs seemingly point to Delta strengthening its corporate image and in turn, distancing itself from the Least Respected ranks in the years to come.

• Papa John’s (#4), Foot Locker (#9), and CVS Health (#10) are all new to the Least Respected Brands this year. Papa John’s saw its Overall Reputation fall 8.1 points over the past five years – a key impediment to their performance. The company’s reputation, which also declined year-over-year, may have been damaged more recently by CEO John Schnatter’s public statements that in response to Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act, he would consider raising the cost of its pizza, cutting jobs, as well as closing a number of Papa John’s restaurants around the country.

• Foot Locker returns to the Least Respected list after earning its way off last year. In 2013, the brand held the #10 spot. Year-over-year the company’s Favorability fell by .6 of a point with Overall Reputation declining a significant 3.2 points. Against the backdrop of heightened competition from Dick’s Sporting Goods and The Sports Authority, the athletic footwear and apparel retailer closed 136 stores during fiscal 2014. In its most recent earnings report management announced that it expects to have 40 fewer locations by the end of the calendar year. Also, the company announced that it would gradually phase out its Lady Foot Locker business over the next few years due to lagging performance, going from 567 locations in 2004 to 213 by the end of 2014.

• CVS Health enters the Least Respected list at #10 despite the goodwill it received when it announced that it would stop selling cigarettes in its 7,700 stores. Since 2010, the company has experienced sharp declines across each of the three attributes of Favorability, with Overall Reputation and Investment Potential failing 11.7 and 8.5 points respectively. While the company’s decision to drop tobacco products garnered praise from consumers, Wall Street analysts were quick to raise concerns about how the move could impact the company’s bottom line. In the fourth quarter of 2014, the company reported that lost tobacco sales caused retail-operating profit to slip by 1.3%.

• Best Buy moves from #5 in 2014 and registers at #8 this year. In recent years, the company has struggled to shake off its reputation as a “showroom” and stave off competition from Amazon.com. According to data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), the company has consistently been ranked as having one of worst customer satisfaction ratings. The company’s improved performance on Tenet’s Least Respected Brands can be attributed largely to its Perception of Management score, which jumped an impressive 11.8 points since 2010 and 2 points year-over-year. Since former CEO Brian Dunn resigned in 2012 and Hubert Joly took the reigns, the company has been reenergizing its efforts on customer service, e-commerce operations and overhauling its supply chain, which have helped to cut costs and improve efficiencies.

Linking Respect to Financial Performance

The 10 Least Respected Brands are largely characterized by having much lower profitability than the 10 Most Respected Brands list. While the Most Respected Brands appear to more nimbly adjust their business strategies to adapt to changing business conditions, the Least Respected Brands, conversely, tend to react more slowly in meeting consumers ever-changing needs and desires.

While Tenet expected to see the operating and net margin rates of the Most Respected companies outperform those of their counterparts on the Least Respected list, the average disparity stood out dramatically. Well respected corporations earn a number of benefits that impact financials including the ability to hire and retain talent, secure favorable terms from business partners/vendors, earn license to operate in a variety of markets and garner increased attention from Wall Street and the investment community at large.

About the data in this report

Tenet Partners’ Brand Respect scores are derived from the CoreBrand^® Index, which provides the longest continuous quantitative benchmarking data, insights and corporate brand valuations for more than 1,000 companies across 50 industries. CBI research, conducted for 25 years since 1990, examines the corporate reputations of major public companies in the United States by polling more than 10,000 business decision-makers and opinion elites on the following:

Familiarity – Respondents are considered to be familiar with a brand if they state that they know more than just the company name. Familiarity scores can range from 0 to 100.

Favorability – Respondents familiar with a corporation are then asked about three dimensions that together, form a Favorability score, also on a scale of 0 to 100.

• Overall Reputation – Do you have a favorable impression of the corporate brand?

• Perception of Management – What is your perception of the company’s management? How would you assess the way senior leadership leads the enterprise and engages stakeholders? Does leadership have a future-forward outlook on the market in which it operates, as well as on the competition?

• Investment Potential – Would you invest in this company?

Brands with the highest Familiarity and Favorability are defined as Most Respected, while brands that are well-known among audiences (identified as the 100 brands in the CBI with the highest Familiarity) but have the lowest Favorability are considered the Least Respected.

*For further insights and data please view the 2015 Top 10 Most and Least Respected Brands SlideShare presentation here. *

About Tenet Partners

Formed from the merger of Brandlogic and CoreBrand, Tenet Partners is a brand innovation and marketing consultancy that helps companies create brand value and unearth business opportunities by putting customers at the center of their business strategies. For more information, please visit us at tenetpartners.com and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

For more information, please contact:
Russ Napolitano
Chief Operating Officer
Tenet Partners
+ 1 212 329-3035
rnapolitano@tenetpartners.com

New York, NY (September 30, 2015) – Tenet Partners, a leading brand innovation and marketing firm, joins Connolly iHealth Technologies in the celebration of its new brand: Cotiviti. Formed from the merger of Connolly and iHealth Technologies, Cotiviti plays a pivotal role in the healthcare and retail industries – delivering improved payment accuracy and financial results to clients using deep industry expertise, powerful analytics and innovation to unlock value.

Working in collaboration with the company’s executive team, Tenet was tasked to create a unified brand platform that would convey the breadth and depth of Cotiviti’s combined expertise, technology and analytics capabilities to help clients capture value across their payment activities. Providing prospective and retrospective claim reviews to 20 of the top 25 US healthcare payers, as well as audit and recovery solutions to nine of the top 10 US retailers, Cotiviti identifies and addresses incongruities in payment streams, adding up to billions of dollars in savings for their clients.

“Cotiviti sprang from the belief that, by combining the knowledge from two proven industry leaders, the organization could generate deeper insight – looking more broadly and deeply at all the information across the entire ecosystem of payments, agreements, policies and relationships,” said James Cerruti, Senior Partner at Tenet Partners. “Cotiviti represents a new chapter in the company’s history, with a steadfast focus on helping their clients uncover hidden sources of value in a data-driven world.”

The new name Tenet created, Cotiviti, underscores the company’s compelling combination of a collaborative client approach with creative problem solving that benefits clients in the two industries Cotiviti serves. Sophisticated and contemporary, the logo depicts the complexity and volume of data Cotiviti works with. The yellow pop of color amid the varied blue data stream is a symbol of Cotiviti’s ability to uncover hidden opportunities to deliver greater value.

To engage the organization in a thorough outside-in and inside-out strategy and creative process, Tenet brought in a multidisciplinary team of strategists, designers, content specialists and digital experts from the onset of the program. Together, and in collaboration with Cotiviti’s senior management team, they conducted client interviews, customer journey mapping and a competitor audit that informed the development of the brand positioning and related tagline – “Analytics. Insight. Value.”

As employees from different businesses were coming together under a single umbrella, it was imperative to help everyone understand the essence of the new brand and the shared vision for the future. To that end, Tenet designed and initiated a brand behavior training program that reached all Cotiviti employees in the US, Canada, the UK and India. Tenet also designed a comprehensive, multi-channel brand rollout strategy, extending to internal and external audiences. This approach resulted in a powerful and cohesive expression across all touchpoints: a new corporate website and user portals, a brand launch microsite, video and other marketing collateral to drive awareness and excitement around the September 28th brand launch.

“Tenet helped us crystallize the unique strengths that have always given Connolly and iHealth Technologies a competitive advantage,” said Michael Axt, Chief Marketing Officer of Cotiviti. “Now, under one unified corporate brand, we are excited for our clients to experience the power of our merged company and the value we can deliver when we bring our distinct strengths together.”

Cotiviti’s headquarters is located in Atlanta, GA with a broad footprint across the US. The company also has offices in Canada, the UK and India. Cotiviti’s retail business will operate as Connolly, a division of Cotiviti, while its healthcare business will operate as Cotiviti Healthcare.

About Tenet Partners

Formed from the merger of Brandlogic and CoreBrand, Tenet Partners is a brand innovation and marketing consultancy that helps companies create brand value and unearth business opportunities by putting customers at the center of their business strategies. For more information, please visit us at tenetpartners.com and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

For more information, please contact:
Russ Napolitano
Chief Operating Officer
Tenet Partners
+ 1 212 329-3035
rnapolitano@tenetpartners.com

New York, NY (September 08, 2015) – In an earlier article I discussed when it was time to rebrand a company. In this article, I’ll focus on when it might be time to refresh your brand strategy.

First thing is to remember a brand is much more than just a logo. It encompasses everything that contributes toward customer experience, including the culture you’re building and how you deliver your product or service. Your brand strategy is an essential business tool. If it is not helping you achieve your firm’s strategic goals, no matter how attached you are to your brand promise or your current campaigns, it may be time to take a fresh look at the strategy behind them.

Here are five signs that it’s time to re-evaluate your brand strategy:

1. Your brand scores are slipping. Akin to regularly servicing an automobile, you need to keep tabs on the health and quality of your brand. If you regularly research your brand’s relevance with key audiences and periodically fine tune your messaging, then you will get a lot more miles out of the brand than if you drive it off the showroom floor and never get it serviced. At a minimum, annual brand health surveys with external and internal audiences will keep you from suffering any major brand breakdowns. At best, you can solicit feedback in real-time from your customers, employees and key constituencies so you can respond quickly and efficiently to any contingency.

2. The business strategy changes. Brand strategy always follows business strategy. Perhaps the leadership team has decided that doubling revenues by acquisition is the goal for the next five years. Or maybe an IPO is in the plans for the not-so-distant future. Or the opportunity has arisen to enter a new international market. As a critical tool for rationalizing your portfolio and building market appeal, your brand needs to align with, support and reflect your business strategy. Your brand strategy is the story that holds your business together, and it must be told clearly and consistently to have maximum positive impact.

3. Competitive pressures have increased. Whether there are new entrants in your industry or a competitor has developed a groundbreaking technological advance, when the dynamics of your industry shift, you need to make sure you aren’t being left behind. “Clear, relevant, believable and distinct” is the mantra we use to keep us on track when developing a brand positioning. When market dynamics change, so can your ability to stand out from the crowd and be unique. If a “me too” provider pops up with a vociferous awareness campaign, you run the danger of becoming a referential brand: “Yeah, we’re just like X only we’ve been around longer.” You need to retool your messages to stand apart, even if it is as simple as being sure to include your years of expertise in your outreach.

4. Your brand expression looks dated. Ideally your original brand strategy was both cutting edge and sustainable. But sometimes market tastes shift beneath you. Just look at all of the companies out there with the word “cyber” in their name, or, more recently, how many logos have all lowercase, san-serif, colorful fonts. Whether it’s an elegant refinement of your current logo or starting from scratch, your brand expression needs to match your cultural personality in tone and manner. You can’t credibly claim to be innovative if your logo is stuck in the 1980s.

5. You want to signal change. Sometimes you just need an opportunity to tell a new story. It could be because you have a change in business strategy, or new leadership, or you have identified a sizable shift in your core audiences. Perhaps you have merged with another firm and together have more to offer than the sum of your two parts. A refreshed look and feel, a new tagline – even a new name – may be what you need to attract attention, build awareness and capture the market share you desire.

Whatever the reason is for re-evaluating your brand strategy, whenever possible, existing brand equity should be retained. Always remember when you’re building your brand, whatever strategic and tactical plan you take on should be fact-based and built to achieve specific goals. Change should never be made simply for change’s sake.

Original article at: Business Observer